Gear & Gadgets —

Android Appalooza: Take note

Four apps to help fulfill all of your note-taking, list-making needs.

Now that the new year is here, you might be feeling a little crazy trying to organize all of those resolutions in your head. I've always found that jotting down those thoughts helps with the process of putting goals into action. Fortunately, there are plenty of apps available in the Google Play Store that offer this sort of thing: a place for Android users to put down their streams of consciousness, store photos that haven't been archived, or leave a mental note.

Catch is an easy-to-use, quick access note-taking app that allows you to make text notes, leave voice memos, create reminders, and then share those items with friends and colleagues who also have the app. There's also a nifty widget that allows quick access to all of these features. If you're using the app for secret business or personal affairs, you can protect your data with a 4-digit PIN number. Upgrading to Catch Pro lets you attach PDF and Office files to your notes, create checklists, and upload up to 50GB of content.

If you're more of a collector than a note taker, Springpad lets you clip and gather things you find around the Web and then fetches contextual information for those things. For instance, if you clip the name of a movie you're dying to see, Springpad will fetch the Rotten Tomatoes review and nearby showtimes in case you decide you want to go see it right then and there. When you're finished, you can even invite your friends to join in on that list of movies you've got going to add their own. The app also enables you to clip articles, snap a photo, scan bar codes, record a voice memo, or save places of interest.

PC users may be especially thrilled to learn that Microsoft has a OneNote application available for Android devices. The app works similarly to the desktop version, enabling users to write notes, store pictures, and make to-do lists. It syncs up with Microsoft SkyDrive so that you can sync the data up in the cloud and access it elsewhere. One caveat, however, is that OneNote Mobile only allows up to 500 different notes; it will then require an upgrade for unlimited use via an in-app purchase.

The ultimate fan favorite, Evernote has been the top tier note-taking application for all mobile devices since its inception. The app allows users to sync notes across different devices (including computers and tablets), create and edit text notes and to-dos, share files, search within those notebooks, and share them with friends and colleagues via Facebook and Twitter. Evernote offers a few other extra features, like the ability to clip Web content from your desktop browser, or you can use the Evernote Smart Notebook by Moleskine to sketch ideas and then scan them into the app with your mobile device. If you decide you want more functionality, Evernote also offers Evernote Premium, a subscription service that lets you lock your notes with a numeric passcode, take notebooks offline on your mobile device, and allow others to edit your stuff.

Florence Ion
Florence was a former Reviews Editor at Ars, with a focus on Android, gadgets, and essential gear. She received a degree in journalism from San Francisco State University and lives in the Bay Area.

21 Reader Comments

I've been searching for a good notes/tasks app for a while now. Tried OneNote and Evernote due to their popularity, but they didn't work for my needs. Tried a few others too.I need to maintain a list of tasks with notes for each task, and record messages. Then, as they are dealt with mark them completed. I don't want to delete them, just mark stuff complete. I also want access to them from multiple devices (Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 7 tablet, and desktop computer). Neither OneNote or Evernote could do that. The one app that has worked so far is "Tasks" by Team Tasks. It is very simple and does what I need. $0.99 for ad-free version. Data is stored in Gmail's task function so can be accessed anywhere, and everything is kept in sync.

ColorNote is my personal favorite. Simple design, easy color-coding, sticky-note like widgets of notes/tasks/daily agenda, talks to all my other apps well, and maintains its own local or cloud backup of all my notes. Also free.

As the first commenter said about Tasks Free. I have been trying out Any.Do and it also provides google tasks sync (but kinda hidden) , and it is also rather simple. But it does not come with any adds on it.

I do wish evernote gave you some functionality before you sign up for an account: Had it installed forever, but never had time to sign up for an account (which you can only do from a desktop, no less) when i remembered I had it and needed to take a note.

Are there any of these that will NOT hand over my notes to some cheesy cloud service run by God Knows Who(TM)? And maybe one that I can, you know, pay a couple of bucks for and not have advertising shoved down my throat or my every move tracked?

I've been searching for a good notes/tasks app for a while now. Tried OneNote and Evernote due to their popularity, but they didn't work for my needs. Tried a few others too.I need to maintain a list of tasks with notes for each task, and record messages. Then, as they are dealt with mark them completed. I don't want to delete them, just mark stuff complete. I also want access to them from multiple devices (Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 7 tablet, and desktop computer). Neither OneNote or Evernote could do that.

Are there any of these that will NOT hand over my notes to some cheesy cloud service run by God Knows Who(TM)? And maybe one that I can, you know, pay a couple of bucks for and not have advertising shoved down my throat or my every move tracked?

If you're already using Gmail or syncing your Android phone contacts to Google, then GTasks will not increase your exposure. Google Tasks are part of the same system.

As for advertising on GTasks, it's minimal, IMHO. When you edit a task, there's a small ad at the bottom of the page; it's the standard size. If you don't want ads, there is a paid version, but I haven't looked into that.

And GTasks works just fine offline, which is another of my requirements: I'm still WiFi only; no data plan.

I need to maintain a list of tasks with notes for each task, and record messages. Then, as they are dealt with mark them completed. I don't want to delete them, just mark stuff complete. I also want access to them from multiple devices (Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 7 tablet, and desktop computer). Neither OneNote or Evernote could do that.

You should take a look at Trello. It has the features you describe - list of tasks, ability to mark them complete, access from multiple devices. Can also be shared (on a list-by-list basis) with team members. Simple to start using, easy to move lists around and group them with the drag and drop interface. You can see the Trello dev team's board here.

Are there any of these that will NOT hand over my notes to some cheesy cloud service run by God Knows Who(TM)? And maybe one that I can, you know, pay a couple of bucks for and not have advertising shoved down my throat or my every move tracked?

Hear, hear.

I haven't tried this out yet, but I just did a bit of hunting around and Tomdroid seem like it might be what we're looking for. It's an Android app compatible with desktop Tomboy. It should be able to sync notes to a private server like the desktop app or you can do it by sdcard. The version in the Play store is pretty old and doesn't let you edit notes, so you'll want the 0.7.x version from the launchpad site.

I went through an evaluation of all these recently and ended up using Evernote. I've been running my own server for syncing files over ssh, but every time I have to fiddle with that it's time away from my real work. The sort of notes I'm putting into there do not need to be the world's most secure data.

Evernote's privacy policy is better than most cloud services. And the last time they changed it, it was actually an improvement in most ways, supposedly due to adding some operations in Switzerland: http://blog.evernote.com/blog/2012/11/0 ... ming-soon/ (I say most ways because it also had "no, you can't mount a class lawsuit now" arbitration changes like everyone is adding now)

I haven't seen ads beyond some "consider our paid service!" during setup, which is an acceptable level of commercial for something free I think. Note that it's possible to mark notes in it local only, and those don't get uploaded. The file format is easy to export out of the program too. If they change the terms of service to something stupid (AKA "pulling an Instagram") I'm confident I can bolt and take my data with me before they go into effect. Ditto for surviving "Evernote goes out of business".

I'm happily syncing across Android, Mac, and Linux systems with the program. Wide platform support is the first thing that got me looking at it. You can also encrypt things in a way that's supposed to be client-side. Note that the local files themselves are still unencrypted even if you do that. I wouldn't rely on that for anything really sensitive--do not put a note with your passwords into there. Realistically, though, if you're not actually compiling your own apps from source code and doing a professional security audit on them, you have to trust *someone* here.

I tried Google Tasks for a bit, mainly because it's the simple way to get things over to the Android phone. Google's probing of my personal data for purposes like ads worries me far more than Evernote. The other reason I'm trying to wean myself of their services (and those of some other companies) is a poor track record for easy export of data. It wouldn't surprise me to find Google just flat out cancels the service one day either.

I'm with you on Evernote, greg. Love their service, the ads are non-intrusive and it's very easy to categorize & sort my notes. Lately, I've been using it to clip Wikipedia articles for a writing project.

I use OneNote often on my Windows laptop but a disdain of the cloud and syncing on my Android phone had me reaching for ReNotify+ recently - I use a Samsung G3 and the TouchWiz tasks felt cumbersome. The app is still on sale I believe.

I've tried several of the note apps in the review, and they were a pretty dismal lot. The problems were exacerbated on my tablet, with horrible screen formatting and unreadably small fonts. Is it a lot to ask that a simple note-taking app should work well on ALL my Android devices?

It's particularly astounding that anyone takes Evernote seriously. The cloud, to hold my notes, when I have gigabytes of storage available locally? With full service at a cost of $45 a year, essentially for the rest of my life?? You MUST be kidding! A flat one-time price of $45 would be steep for a lifetime license to the world's fanciest note-taking software on the PC. For a very good Android app, you might expect to pay $10 or less. Maybe another $5, optionally, when they do a major update, every couple of years...

I will try all the other apps mentioned in the comments here, and hope that one of those will prove better. But for now, I have to say that working with personal information is something that's not well-supported by the software market... and not just on Android.

The notes support some basic formatting, including checkboxes to mark items as done and the GUI interface provided by Flick Note is excellent, for phone and tablet. Different gestures hide different aspects of the screen for fullscreen note editing, or other layouts.

It synchronises to all pc's / phones / tablets that have Flick Note or SimpleNoteApp.com access, and the bonus point is that Flick Note supports multiple accounts, so one account for personal, one for family/wife etc. One up on the iPhone/iPad version...

It's particularly astounding that anyone takes Evernote seriously. The cloud, to hold my notes, when I have gigabytes of storage available locally? With full service at a cost of $45 a year, essentially for the rest of my life?? You MUST be kidding! A flat one-time price of $45 would be steep for a lifetime license to the world's fanciest note-taking software on the PC. For a very good Android app, you might expect to pay $10 or less. Maybe another $5, optionally, when they do a major update, every couple of years...

I haven't paid a dime for Evernote. You only have to pay if you want to sync more than 1GB of data per month, or offline access on your portable devices. And syncing is exactly why it's awesome: I can access my notes from my desktop, my iPad or my smartphone, always up to date everywhere. I don't get why people are so averse to cloud storage. (I don't keep anything that needs secured on them, so that's irrelevant).

I've been searching for a good notes/tasks app for a while now. Tried OneNote and Evernote due to their popularity, but they didn't work for my needs. Tried a few others too.I need to maintain a list of tasks with notes for each task, and record messages. Then, as they are dealt with mark them completed. I don't want to delete them, just mark stuff complete. I also want access to them from multiple devices (Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 7 tablet, and desktop computer). Neither OneNote or Evernote could do that.

Evernote should sync between all of those devices you listed, you can maintain a list of tasks by putting each task as a note then using a complete tag to "mark stuff complete" without deleting them. Evernote can record voice, pictures, pdfs and most other media type to connect with your notes. The article doesn't mention all the excellent browser plugins for saving webpages and emails to read later directly to it.

Evernote is also free and you only have to pay if you are syncing large amounts of media between all your devices each month which is a nonissue for me but for some power users may be an issue.

www.thesecretweapon.org is a great template system to start with for Evernote and I can't recommend it highly enough if you like a GTD workflow.